Thursday, 9 April 2015

Hola Mexico

Well hello everyone! First off I would like to apologize from the bottom of my heart for my seamingly slow updates lately... Let's just say there is never a dull moment here in Las Vegas, which it makes it very hard for me to find time to sit down and blog. So, here I am trying to think of what I want to say and really I have I much I could say but really what it all waters down to is God is good. So I think what I will do is publish a few post right after each other outlining what I have been up to these last few weeks. So a couple of weeks ago I was in Ensenada and Tijuana, Mexico doing a mid DTS outreach. Instead of making a grocery list of all the things we did there, I thought I would share a few amazing stories. So one major thing that is a theme so every follower of Christ is miracles and spiritual gifts. For those of you who maybe aren't Christians what I mean by that is people who can heal others supernaturally, or people who know things about other people who hey have never met before, or the ability to predict the future and those predictions come through. Although those ideas are biblical, it's really easy to become skeptical when you don't see those things happen on a day to day basis. Let me just tell you, miracle ARE real. There was this one lady who had a hurt hand, and she was holding it in a fist because she couldn't open it, and had not been able to open it for a few weeks. A few people from my group went over to her and asked if they could pray. They prayed for her hand and right after she was able to open her hand completely. There is power in the name of Jesus. In the society we live in now a days it's so easy to question and justify everything and anything, but I'm telling you I saw a woman with a hurt hand, who's hand wasn't hurt simply due to prayer. I know for a fact this wasn't a just a coincident because I have seen things like this happen over and over again since I've been here. What I am not saying is that God is some genie that will heal anyone and everyone when we demand it. No, what I am saying is there is power in prayer, and there is power in the name of Jesus so much so that things that seem impossible can happen and you can witness it with your own two eyes. One other cool thing we did in Mexico was go to two different womens safe houses and rehabilitation centers (a picture with the girls is above). This was such a great experience because it adds such a real aspect to a problem that you hear about over and over and over again. It's so easy to get caught up in numbers and statistics and forget about the fact that there are real people, with names, and stories attached to those stats. We went into these centers and talked to the girls, and just knowing their name, even though most of them didn't speak English just made something that seemed so distant so close. At one point we were praying for the girls, and this one teenaged aged girl started sobbing in my arms, and the best part was she had no idea what I was saying, but just the fact that I took the time to care about her in that moment was enough. One last story was from the red light district in Tijuana. So before we went to the red light district one of my leaders was saying that this would be way beyond what we could imagine a red light district to be. For those of you who don't know a red light district is a place within a city where prositution is legal, and highly concentrated so men go there to get women, and women go there to get men. Let me just say that the realness and the depth of human trafficking just hit me hard in that moment. I literally saw dozens of women lined up against the wall of clubs waiting for a customer to pick them up. In that moment it's hard to know what to say or do seeing young girls probably younger than me waiting to be picked up. Although it was sad, and enraging at the same time it just lit this fire in me to keep pressing on. Even though this problem is huge I think people give up as soon as they realize how huge it really is. It's so easy to get caught up in the sadness and anger towards human trafficking and so many people allow themselves to dwell in that. If more people kept pressing on and fighting instead of just being sad then lives would change, and statistics would be reversed. So that's where I am at, pressing on because things will change when people step up. Overall my time in Mexico was a great experience in which I got to love others, and experience the world through God's eyes.